Nosferatu: An Allegory for Desire
Jun. 4th, 2026 07:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rocky41_7I've been deep-diving in the Nosferatu (2024) tumblr tag since finishing the movie the other day and while I think there are many ways to interpret the film (including simply accepting it on its face), I wanted to look at it through the lens of repressed female desire and sexuality in the 19th century. Specifically, viewing Count Orlok as the manifestation of protagonist Ellen's sexuality and desire.
Spoilers for the film abound below the cut!
Ellen Hutter, the protagonist, begins to be visited by the vampire Count Orlok through dreams and visions as a teenager. This would coincide with the blossoming of her sexuality and her first experiences with desire, as well as her early menstruation and developing ability to bear children. In the opening scenes which depict the origins of this relationship, there is a long shot of Ellen lying outside in the grass at night, gasping in pleasure. Yet, as one meta on tumblr rightfully pointed out, it doesn't look like she's having sex with someone--it looks like she's masturbating.
Later in the film, Ellen describes to her husband Thomas an instance when her father found her during one of these ecstatic episodes and was disgusted and angry. And yes, the average well-to-do father in a 19th century German state likely would have been disgusted and angry to find his daughter naked and touching herself in their yard at night. But he is also likely to be repulsed by the entirety of this situation: by his daughter's fertility, by her burgeoning sexuality, by the very idea of her having desires and being desirable. Ellen's views on these things are thereby solidified: that her desire is wrong, shameful, vile. She later describes her relationship with Orlok to Thomas as "my secret shame."
Throughout the film, Ellen's "melancholia" is treated as a problem by everyone around her, but for the most part, one she can overcome. Indeed, the first scenes we see of her as an adult are in the glow of her recent honeymoon--a period she complains (lovingly) to Thomas was "too short." She attempts to pull Thomas back into bed for sex, but he insists he must depart for work. The juxtaposition here is of Ellen as a woman who has "properly" tamed her desire by entering into a committed (heterosexual, monogamous) relationship as Good Women do, with the immediate reminder that her desire still exists and is prominent in her thoughts.
Ellen talks about how her marriage to Thomas has "cured" her of her earlier emotional and behavioral problems, which persisted throughout her adolescence and young adulthood, and she adores him. And Thomas loves her too! He believes she has and can continue to overcome her emotional problems! She can be a Good Woman. As her condition declines in his absence, she insists she needs his return, and everyone around her agrees--everything will be better for her when Thomas is back. Ellen very well may love Thomas--indeed, she shows him great tenderness and regard throughout--but she also clings to the idea that she has been fixed by him. That she has left behind the shame of her sexual desire and can now channel herself appropriately into the marriage bed at the inclinations of her husband. If even marriage can't fix her, then she must be doomed. Nearer to the climax of the film, she tells Thomas, after confessing to her relationship with Orlok, that she is "unclean" and he shouldn't touch her. If she has not been, cannot be, cured by Thomas, she is doomed to be "unclean" by virtue of her lust forever.
Contrast Ellen with her friend Anna, someone Ellen openly admires for how well she performs womanhood and wifehood. Friedrich, Thomas' friend and Anna's husband, tells Thomas privately that he can't keep his hands off Anna. They have two children and a third on the way, yet Anna demurely rejects Friedrich's attempts at a public kiss, only capitulating when he insists. Anna is subdued, gentle, and knows her place. She isn't a doormat for Friedrich, but neither does she ever push back hard enough to raise his masculine temper. Ellen, for her part, departs the Hardings' after an ugly fight where she accuses Friedrich of cruelty and asks why he "hates" her. If Anna is the contemporary ideal of a wife, Ellen most assuredly is not it. "Thank you for loving me," Ellen tells Anna in an intimate moment. She doesn't say in spite of my flaws, in spite of my failures, in spite of how repulsive I am, but the ghost of the words is there.
Orlok, in this lens the manifestation of Ellen's lust, is grotesque. A rotting corpse, sickly and parasitic, a monster. He grunts and wheezes like an animal, and in the opening scenes of their first encounters, crouches over her supine form in the grass like a beast. Something to be feared and destroyed. Not an ill-fitting image of female sexuality for mid-19th century Europe, which reviled the very notion a Good Woman could have sexual urges. The medicalization of women's sexuality was alive and well, with women's sex organs being cast as the source of so many of their "problems" and their "hysteria" cured by medical rape. What was women's sexuality to the upper class of the time, if not just a form of hysteria? Another women's problem to be cured with sedation, restraints, and isolation?
Ellen's desire arrives in Wisborg in terrible form: Plague rats swarm the city, which descends into anarchy in days; Anna and both of Anna's daughters are slain; Friedrich meets a miserable end as well. Despite Ellen cleaving to the sanctity of her marriage, to her new form as a Good Woman, her sexuality and desire will not be denied, and the city quails from it.
In their first reunion since her marriage, in their first face-to-face meeting, Ellen rejects Orlok. She sneers at him that she "abhors" him, and reaffirms her commitment to her marriage. She refuses to be tempted by his offers of partnership or claims to their connection. Here, faced again with her sexuality, Ellen thrusts it away as a weakness of her lonely adolescence, and in response, Orlok threatens to destroy her marriage by killing Thomas.
"I am an appetite, nothing more," says Orlok of himself. When Ellen accuses him of being unable to love, he does not argue. Yet, by his own admission, he "cannot be sated without you [Ellen]."
And yet, Ellen is drawn to him. Even to Thomas she describes the bliss of their early relationship, and at one point, tells Thomas coldly that he "could never please me as he [Orlok] did." When Ellen commits to sleeping with Orlok to destroy him, there is an extended scene of her letting her hair down in thoughtful preparation, her expression determined, without a trace of fear or apprehension. When she greets him in the bedroom, she is bedecked in her wedding gown and veil. When they finally kiss, the moment draws on and on, each creeping towards the other with tentative yearning, and both parties sink into the kiss. It is hard to mistake the ecstasy in Ellen's face when they couple, when Orlok bites her over the heart, where earlier she had begged Thomas to kiss her ("More," she whispers raggedly as he sups, "more.")
Ellen's desire can be defeated only through capitulation. Although Thomas is rushing to her, to protect her from this moment, to preserve her virtue, he is too late, arriving only to see the couple tangled in the Hutters' marriage bed. In their last moments together, as Orlok dissolves in the light of the sun, a bloodless Ellen tenderly guides his head back to her bloody breast, cradling him against her as they both lapse out of life.
Of course, this is not the only lens through which the movie can be seen, but it's one I find particularly compelling, and I think it's fabulous work by the creators that it's possible to see so many different things in the same work. A fine film all around!
Spoilers for the film abound below the cut!
Ellen Hutter, the protagonist, begins to be visited by the vampire Count Orlok through dreams and visions as a teenager. This would coincide with the blossoming of her sexuality and her first experiences with desire, as well as her early menstruation and developing ability to bear children. In the opening scenes which depict the origins of this relationship, there is a long shot of Ellen lying outside in the grass at night, gasping in pleasure. Yet, as one meta on tumblr rightfully pointed out, it doesn't look like she's having sex with someone--it looks like she's masturbating.
Later in the film, Ellen describes to her husband Thomas an instance when her father found her during one of these ecstatic episodes and was disgusted and angry. And yes, the average well-to-do father in a 19th century German state likely would have been disgusted and angry to find his daughter naked and touching herself in their yard at night. But he is also likely to be repulsed by the entirety of this situation: by his daughter's fertility, by her burgeoning sexuality, by the very idea of her having desires and being desirable. Ellen's views on these things are thereby solidified: that her desire is wrong, shameful, vile. She later describes her relationship with Orlok to Thomas as "my secret shame."
Throughout the film, Ellen's "melancholia" is treated as a problem by everyone around her, but for the most part, one she can overcome. Indeed, the first scenes we see of her as an adult are in the glow of her recent honeymoon--a period she complains (lovingly) to Thomas was "too short." She attempts to pull Thomas back into bed for sex, but he insists he must depart for work. The juxtaposition here is of Ellen as a woman who has "properly" tamed her desire by entering into a committed (heterosexual, monogamous) relationship as Good Women do, with the immediate reminder that her desire still exists and is prominent in her thoughts.
Ellen talks about how her marriage to Thomas has "cured" her of her earlier emotional and behavioral problems, which persisted throughout her adolescence and young adulthood, and she adores him. And Thomas loves her too! He believes she has and can continue to overcome her emotional problems! She can be a Good Woman. As her condition declines in his absence, she insists she needs his return, and everyone around her agrees--everything will be better for her when Thomas is back. Ellen very well may love Thomas--indeed, she shows him great tenderness and regard throughout--but she also clings to the idea that she has been fixed by him. That she has left behind the shame of her sexual desire and can now channel herself appropriately into the marriage bed at the inclinations of her husband. If even marriage can't fix her, then she must be doomed. Nearer to the climax of the film, she tells Thomas, after confessing to her relationship with Orlok, that she is "unclean" and he shouldn't touch her. If she has not been, cannot be, cured by Thomas, she is doomed to be "unclean" by virtue of her lust forever.
Contrast Ellen with her friend Anna, someone Ellen openly admires for how well she performs womanhood and wifehood. Friedrich, Thomas' friend and Anna's husband, tells Thomas privately that he can't keep his hands off Anna. They have two children and a third on the way, yet Anna demurely rejects Friedrich's attempts at a public kiss, only capitulating when he insists. Anna is subdued, gentle, and knows her place. She isn't a doormat for Friedrich, but neither does she ever push back hard enough to raise his masculine temper. Ellen, for her part, departs the Hardings' after an ugly fight where she accuses Friedrich of cruelty and asks why he "hates" her. If Anna is the contemporary ideal of a wife, Ellen most assuredly is not it. "Thank you for loving me," Ellen tells Anna in an intimate moment. She doesn't say in spite of my flaws, in spite of my failures, in spite of how repulsive I am, but the ghost of the words is there.
Orlok, in this lens the manifestation of Ellen's lust, is grotesque. A rotting corpse, sickly and parasitic, a monster. He grunts and wheezes like an animal, and in the opening scenes of their first encounters, crouches over her supine form in the grass like a beast. Something to be feared and destroyed. Not an ill-fitting image of female sexuality for mid-19th century Europe, which reviled the very notion a Good Woman could have sexual urges. The medicalization of women's sexuality was alive and well, with women's sex organs being cast as the source of so many of their "problems" and their "hysteria" cured by medical rape. What was women's sexuality to the upper class of the time, if not just a form of hysteria? Another women's problem to be cured with sedation, restraints, and isolation?
Ellen's desire arrives in Wisborg in terrible form: Plague rats swarm the city, which descends into anarchy in days; Anna and both of Anna's daughters are slain; Friedrich meets a miserable end as well. Despite Ellen cleaving to the sanctity of her marriage, to her new form as a Good Woman, her sexuality and desire will not be denied, and the city quails from it.
In their first reunion since her marriage, in their first face-to-face meeting, Ellen rejects Orlok. She sneers at him that she "abhors" him, and reaffirms her commitment to her marriage. She refuses to be tempted by his offers of partnership or claims to their connection. Here, faced again with her sexuality, Ellen thrusts it away as a weakness of her lonely adolescence, and in response, Orlok threatens to destroy her marriage by killing Thomas.
"I am an appetite, nothing more," says Orlok of himself. When Ellen accuses him of being unable to love, he does not argue. Yet, by his own admission, he "cannot be sated without you [Ellen]."
And yet, Ellen is drawn to him. Even to Thomas she describes the bliss of their early relationship, and at one point, tells Thomas coldly that he "could never please me as he [Orlok] did." When Ellen commits to sleeping with Orlok to destroy him, there is an extended scene of her letting her hair down in thoughtful preparation, her expression determined, without a trace of fear or apprehension. When she greets him in the bedroom, she is bedecked in her wedding gown and veil. When they finally kiss, the moment draws on and on, each creeping towards the other with tentative yearning, and both parties sink into the kiss. It is hard to mistake the ecstasy in Ellen's face when they couple, when Orlok bites her over the heart, where earlier she had begged Thomas to kiss her ("More," she whispers raggedly as he sups, "more.")
Ellen's desire can be defeated only through capitulation. Although Thomas is rushing to her, to protect her from this moment, to preserve her virtue, he is too late, arriving only to see the couple tangled in the Hutters' marriage bed. In their last moments together, as Orlok dissolves in the light of the sun, a bloodless Ellen tenderly guides his head back to her bloody breast, cradling him against her as they both lapse out of life.
Of course, this is not the only lens through which the movie can be seen, but it's one I find particularly compelling, and I think it's fabulous work by the creators that it's possible to see so many different things in the same work. A fine film all around!